The Third Companion
by BrilliantCrescentStar
Summary: Before the Doctor met Rose, he ran into a girl in Shanghai. But she is no ordinary human... 9thdoctor.
1. Zoe Part 1: Foreigner

The Third Companion

Before the doctor met Rose, he ran into a girl in Shanghai…

Welcome to my doctor who fanfic, it's been ages in the making (I started thinking about it sometime around Aliens of London/World War 3). And boom town aired last night- that was great, but only two more episodes left with the Chris-doctor. Boo. This will be part do my own thing fic, part fix it fic, part exploring who did what and why fic, but for now it's just 'the girl in Shanghai'. You'll see the rest of what I mean when I get up to it.

This fic has done the weirdest things to me. Not only was Zoe not listening to what I wanted her to be (she was originally a very no-nonsense, kinda warriorlike person), the story kept on changing what it wanted to be too. And she changed her name from Zarah- I have this thing for giving characters unusual names. I got away with it when I wrote Orphan's run.

A/N: A Zhongguoren (Jong-gwo-ren) is a Chinese person. And taiji is more commonly known as taichi, if that helps any. And x's are prounounced like sh.

Zoe Part1: Foreigner

Shanghai, 2010

Before the sun rose over the tower that looked like it belonged to the 23rd century, the opposite side of the river to the Bund, a young woman bowed to the horizon, then silently and steadily made the movements of her favourite taiji form. By the time the sky had lightened, the sun glowing invisibly through the perpetual haze of smog that hung over Shanghai, there were maybe twenty people playing taiji on the bank of the river. To the Chinese she would have looked foreign, but to a foreigner she looked completely Chinese: her eyes were a little too green, her long black hair slightly wavy.

Every morning since she had arrived in Shanghai, she had gotten up early to play taiji on the Bund, the concrete and steel shore of the Huangpu river. Every day the rocket like tv tower, with its twin red many faced spheres, reflected the rising sun, every day she felt she didn't belong amongst the true Zhongguoren, the middle aged and elderly playing taiji who could see in the very shape of her face that one of her parents was not Chinese. Every day she stood away from them, sure they would chatter about how some silly foreigner would prattle to her friends back home about how she played taiji with real Chinese people. And every day she determinedly pushed those feelings aside.

While performing 'cloud hands', she had a vague feeling she was being watched. She ignored it, doubting herself, thinking of nothing but the movements and how they felt, how her feet felt gently pressing against the concrete paved path. She turned to do 'snake creeps down' and almost stood on a stranger's foot.

She jumped with fright and backed away apologetically. "Sorry, I didn't see you there."

_What the hell were you doing that close to me!_

"No, it was my fault. I was standing too close."

He was a foreigner; English, by his accent. Kinda tall, maybe fortyish, kinda odd-looking. Nice jacket.

"Could you teach me? It looks like fun."

She promptly shook her head and took a step back. "No, I can't. Maybe you should come earlier in the morning and just copy someone," she suggested.

"They won't tell me if I'm doing it wrong, will they? Come on, show me," he coaxed her gently. "What do I do first?"

"No, I can't." She stammered. "I'm not good at telling people what to do-"

"Show me then. Come on, if you can do it, you can show me."

She took a deep breath, and started. The stranger copied as well as he could.

"No, you don't do it like that," she said after having been to shy to correct several horrendous mistakes. She couldn't meet his gaze, instead staring at a nearby lamppost. "You never bend your arm that sharply when you're doing taichi." She looked at his feet. "And you kinda stuffed up a bit before as well."

She started from the start, trying to explain everything as they went but sometimes unable to say exactly what she meant. And he understood, and she did well.

"I never thought I would find an Aussie who could do taichi in Shanghai," he commented, interrupting her.

"Why do you think I'm Australian?"

He grinned.

"Your accent. And I know you're not Chinese because your eyes are a little bit green."

She considered carefully whether how much she should tell him.

"I'm working up here."

"Doing what?" He folded his arms.

"Translating."

"Working holiday?"

"Yes and no."

Although she couldn't see anything obviously wrong, she felt uneasy.

"What about you?" she asked. "What are you doing in Shanghai?"

"I'm on business."

"What sort of business?" she pushed him. He leaned casually against the railing, arms still folded.

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

He grinned at her again. "Nope."

"Why are you asking so many questions?"

"I'm interested." He unfolded his arms and moved closer to her. "It's not every day you find a half Chinese girl who has green eyes in the middle of Shanghai."

Her eyes flickered to his feet, then squarely to his eyes.

"Its not every day a foreigner in Shanghai asks you to teach him taichi either."

She leaned back on the railing behind her, having some sort of upper hand.

"Ni hai buzhidao wode mingzi." _You don't even know my name._

She was almost certain he didn't speak Mandarin.

"Well, what's your name then?"

"Ni xian gaosu wo a." _You tell me first._

He paused.

"Thought so."

The girl turned her back on the stranger, and left him there on the Bund.

Tell me if the Chinese is a pain, I'll tone it down a little.

And please r&r. Was it good? Bad? Horrible? Surprising? Purple with puce polka dots and shaped like a herring?


	2. Zoe Part 2: Translator

Zoe Part 2:

Translator

Sorry about the wait. There was this short story comp, which I had 2 weeks to write at least 2000 words in, and feeling really uninspired about my idea. Needless to say, I abandoned it. And then there was me trying to be more organised with my schoolwork (it lasted for about 2 days) and then Zoe wasn't listening to me. Again. And then…

Thanks for the reviews:

Roma-roma: I know Chinese because I've been learning it for about 6 years as a second language. Great language, great culture. More fun than European languages, a lot less conjugation :-)

Earthdragon: I was just a little worried about people trying to figure out how the Chinese sounds. I haven't seen firefly, but sounds cool (Joss Whedon thing, how could it not be cool?) And will go on. I hope. Me from Geelong. Yay?

And by the way: except for Zoe, not mine. BBC's, I think. And everyone who put something into the creation of the doctor; past and present writers, past and present actors.

* * *

In a cramped storeroom-now-office on the fifth floor of the Shanghai museum, Zoe typed away on an outdated computer, translating Chinese to English for foreign tourists. The job was boring, low paid by Australian standards, but it was something.

Zoe leaned back in her chair and stretched. She'd been there typing for a few hours and needed a quick break. Marking where she was up to and saving the document, she stood up to walk around a little. Her necklace came undone and fell to the floor.

The pendant was rather heavy, shaped like a spiral sea shell and the colour of rose gold. Her father had always joked it was made of orichalcum- he'd given it to her, said it was a present from his parents. Its chain was almost more unusual than the pendant- it was bright blue and impossible to break, except for that damn clasp.

Zoe stuffed it in her pocket, not game to try to get it back on.

She got back to work. The computer program that wrote Chinese was awkward and annoying to use; it listed characters in the order they would appear in the dictionary, rather than by how often they would be used in normal language. At least it didn't automatically change the _pinyin_ into characters when she tapped the spacebar. Things could always be worse.

Something dropped from one of the storage shelves onto a wooden crate. It sounded like whatever had dropped was made of metal, but small, like a small tin or something. She clicked on the save icon, just in case, and got up to investigate.

How could anything have fallen off one of the shelves? The people who put the artefacts away were very diligent in making sure they were placed well away from the edge. Its not likely that they left a tin of something anywhere, but it wasn't impossible.

Zoe, finding nothing on the crates, gave up and returned to her cramped desk and her computer. She had just started typing again when she heard a knock on her door. She saved her work again, and got up to open it.

Standing there was the foreigner from the morning.

"Well, hello," he said. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."

Zoe gripped the edge of the door hard with nerves. She wasn't all that good at dealing with strays.

"I'm sorry, this is a staff area. Go back down the stairs-"

"I got a call to check up on a problem, so here I am."

She was gripping the door so hard that her knuckles were white.

"They don't usually hire foreigners for maintenance work," she said quietly.

"Yet here I am," he replied. Zoe maintained her grip on the door.

"Are you going to let me in or not," he said sharply. She opened the door and let him in. He went straight to the wooden crates.

"What did they call you in for?" She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach that she shouldn't trust him, that he hadn't been called in by the museum.

"They said there were termites in the crates."

She would have loved to call his bluff, but what if she was wrong? She'd look really stupid then.

"They don't look like they have termites," she prodded, a lot gentler than she would have liked.

"That doesn't mean there aren't any." He pulled out a metal tube from a pocket inside his jacket, about the size of a small torch.

She had tried, that was good enough for her. She wouldn't admit to anyone but herself that she was scared to try again. She gripped the pendant in her pocket. After all, if he wasn't here because he had been asked, he was most likely doing something illegal, and would probably hurt her if she tried to get in the day.

"Who called you in?" she asked, barely realising she had spoken the words.

"I don't know. He didn't tell me his name."

"The head of the museum or the museum's head of maintenance?"

He looked like he was going to answer for a second, then he changed his mind. "I don't know. Am I supposed to?"

"I don't know. It's just… odd that the museum would hire a foreigner."

"Yet they hired you."

Zoe let the pendant go. She didn't know what to say. She wasn't expecting it. He was right, but it hurt. Not belonging anywhere was the bane of her existence.

She sat back down at the computer, and resumed her work.

"I'm the Doctor."

"What?"

"I'm the Doctor. You wanted to know my name, so there it is. The Doctor."

She kept typing, unsure what to say.

"What's your name?"

She scrolled across the bar to find the character she needed. How could she respond when he hadn't given her what she had asked for.

"I told you my name, so what's yours?"

Zoe typed in the next word.

" 'The Doctor' isn't a name, it's a title. You don't look like much of a doctor," she added, as if that was a good enough excuse. Honestly, she wasn't sure that he could even be trusted with her name. She scrolled through the bar, clicked on the wrong character, and went on to the next word.

"Looks can be deceiving."

She thought that he meant something else, but she kept her mouth shut. No point in saying anything. She'd said enough already.

He got off the crates and put the metal thing back in his pocket.

"Done. No more pesky termites."

He strolled out the door.

"Thanks."

Zoe closed the door behind him.

Almost immediately, a small insect bit her on the leg. The bite really hurt. She turned her legs out from under the cramped desk and pulled up the leg of her pants. There was a small cut on her leg, bleeding a little. She wiped the blood away. It felt like a pin or a staple had embedded itself in her leg, but when she felt it more carefully, it felt normal.

While she was examining her leg, a pair of miniature tarantulas, like tiny golden robots, jumped from the desk into her backpack unnoticed. Having reached their destination, they extended their fangs and waved their forelegs in the air in triumph.

* * *

You like? You not like? Sorry it was a bit boring, but it should get better. Soon. Ish. In my first draft when Zoe had a different name and was cool as a cucumber, she had the Doctor over the balcony outside her office. :-) Iwould have loved to put it in, but itwouldn't fit the characterquite fit… Anyway, please R&R.

A/N: Pinyin isa system ofwriting down how chinese characters sound. The language would be really hard to learn without it.


	3. Zoe Part 3: The Bund

I am planning to try to get out a chapter of _something_ a week, but knowing how well the last few times I actually decided to do that went, don't get your hopes up.

A/N: Usually you see taichi open-handed, but there are also sword forms and fan forms. And a form developed for the walking stick in case someone tries to steal granny's handbag.

Just about to get fun. You will know it once you see it.

* * *

Zoe Part 3: The Bund

The sun rose over the Bund, over the Shanghai TV tower as it had the morning before, and had every morning since before it had been a tiny fishing village on the Asia's East coast, greeted by the smog of the post industrial world.

Zoe had taken her taichi sword to the Bund to practise the sword form she had been taught. The sword was her mother's, a hand-me-down, but still served its purpose well. It was blunt, like all tai chi swords were: no point in having it sharp, unless you really wanted to cut yourself on it while learning the form.

She had seen the strange foreigner out of the corner of her eye, playing taichi with a sword as well; but badly, awkwardly, like he had never done the form before. It took her a minute to realise that he was copying whoever he was standing behind.

She felt sorry for him, but after yesterday she wasn't about to offer to teach him. Not that she would normally dare offer to teach a near stranger anything.

Zoe had just finished and was packing her sword away when another taichi sword blocked her path, shoulder to pavement.

"I know who you are," the Doctor said, quite reasonably. "And I know what you're hiding."

She wasn't sure whether to just ignore him, put her sword in her bag and leave, or just stay there and hope he would go away eventually. Option number two won out, being easier for her fear-addled brain to handle.

"Who am I?" she asked, her voice quivering, "And what am I hiding?"

"You don't know?" he said, removing his sword and gently pulling her to her feet. She clung to the hilt of her sword like a starfish to a rock, pulling it up with her. "Then I might have to enlighten you."

Zoe waited for him to make the next move.

"You are the leader of the invasion of Seogfh in the museum, and as you let me deactivate them without putting up a fight, I assume you have another lot hiding somewhere else." His tone had changed, challenging and unforgiving.

He twisted his sword so swiftly that it was resting on Zoe shoulder before she could back away, cold against her neck.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she whispered, backing off. She was caught against the railing, the fence between the concreted river bank and the dirty river. She cowered like a cornered puppy. "Please don't hurt me."

"Where are they?" he demanded, eyes boring into her like twin steel blades.

She pulled herself as far away from him as the railing would allow. Suddenly, something in her snapped, and she looked straight at him, staring him down.

"Who the hell do you think you are, threatening me here in front of all these people!" she shouted. "Can't I juist come here like I have every other morning and play taiji in peace!"

He saw the fear in her eyes, the frustration, and backed away from the railing.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. He let her go, and she stood up cautiously, believing him, but not entirely sure.

A police car pulled up to the gutter. The Doctor turned to look, and left without a word.

Zoe sort of wished he hadn't. She wanted to sort the whole lot out, tell the police it was a mistake and sort it out with them too. But they wouldn't listen when she said not to worry about it, that it must have been a mistake, that she didn't want him arrested.

All she could do was hope, and wait.

* * *

Don't ask me how you pronounce the aliens' name, I don't know myself…

People are looking, but no one's reviewing… Am I doing good? Bad? Boring? Finally getting good? Please tell me! Even if you just want to say that my starting every paragraph with 'she' is getting on your nerves! Or Zoe is getting on your nerves (I hope not but still…)


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